At our house, we do friend birthday parties every other year and this was Charlie's year. He told me a few months ago that he wanted a camping party so I got online and ordered these plates:
About two weeks before the party, all I had were plates. I hadn't given the party another thought. This is so unlike me. I LOVE birthday parties!! This time though I was having a hard time getting started. I confess that I feel a lot of self inflicted pressure to make things party perfect since it's sort of kind of part of my business. I started thinking that all these over the top parties in blogland are a little silly. WHAT?? I know, SO UNLIKE ME!!! I kept thinking there was no way I could plan a cute party during one of my busiest seasons. I procrastinated big time and even tried to talk Charlie out of a party at all. No luck there so I used a girly glamping invite that I had just made for a sweet customer and turned it boyish and stuck those invites in the mail. We kept the invite list small...only inviting the boys in his class.
About a week before the party, I decided to make some paper chain decorations and started getting a little more excited about making this boy camping party have a little bit of "cute" in it. I realized that I was born to party (in a cute, matchy matchy, themed way) and I just needed to get out of my party slump and do what I love to do.
3 days before the party, I did a little shopping for party supplies and food. I do parties on a budget...I seriously try hard not to spend a ton of money and I did awesome at sticking to a tiny budget on this one. The night before the party, all I had were some paper plates and some paper chains and my dining room table looked like this:
I was busy, busy the day of the party...
The cute campfire cake was made by my friend, Jessica. She does a great job and they taste YUMMY too!
The birthday boy was SO HAPPY...and that's what matters most!
Of course, he really could have cared less about all the cute stuff.
He was all about the fire...
and the tent.
We did play a few games. I hate games. However, I always think we need to have them at birthday parties. I thought a marshmallow shooting range would be fun...ya know, aiming for a target?? Well, the target turned out to be the adults after a few dads (who shall remain nameless) got involved. Game fail...but the boys had fun. The next game was mosquito tag which I thought was an adorable idea.
Everyone gets a sheet of stickers and you run around giving each other "mosquito bites." In the end the person with the least amount of mosquito bites wins. Cute, huh? Maybe they were too young to "get it" because they really just ran around screaming. Still, they were having fun.
Last game: A BEAR HUNT. It was awesome. They got it, they loved it. We basically did a scavenger hunt on our street with clues. Each kid ended up with a bag of gummy bears.
It was really fun and they loved being able to read the clues all by themselves and figure them out.
While the cute factor of party printables and themed games was lost on Charlie, he was the one that insisted on "I survived Camp Charlie" t-shirts.
I've gotta say that I definitely EARNED that shirt!! It turned out to be one crazy boy party!!
